College One: Self-evaluation...

Research and First Impressions

The Stockport Introductory Session on Monday 11th March, made me feel comfortable in my choosing of College One. I knew College One would take me out of my comfort zone and meeting everyone else that is doing College One was a good way to start. The Ice Breaker of getting into pairs and using the knowledge of their partners to put onto a cup was eventful and enjoyable, it helped everyone settle in.

                All of the lectures and workshops have prepared me in how to approach preparing and running a workshop. I found most of the practical workshops challenging, they all placed me out of my comfort zone. Throughout the workshops, working in pairs and teams was encouraged, I surprisingly found out that I liked working in groups but still shied away from expressing our results at feedback time. As most of these workshops were aimed at helping us plan and produce our own workshop, I feel like my strengths lean more towards being organised. From all of the variety throughout the workshops, I was able to adapt and this boosted my confidence.

                Choosing the Organisation that would be best for me was a difficult decision. I chosen Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA) because I felt like it was more beneficial for my future career and for applying onto a PGCE  course. Louise Klinck also made the opportunity sound amazing and I wanted to be a part of it.

Workshop Activities

Throughout the workshops, I encountered a broad range of materials and approaches to how a workshop could run. I responded to each activity, however, I liked some workshops more than others. I particularly enjoyed working over someone else's work! This task demonstrated the idea of adapting myself to suit and work around a particular problem. It made me focus on risk assessing my workshop ideas and always having other possibilities in case any errors occur.

                I preferred working with materials because of my Textiles background but I did enjoy exploring the elements of 3-D and the idea of forming a shape using limited resources. For example: making a Totem pole that had the theme of Manchester using only railcard tickets, card and shredded paper. I did not like working with sweets, they made my hands sticky and the smell was sickly, I do however, understand why children would get excited to work with them. I found crafting an Origami Crane bird difficult to do even though I had the instructions directly in front of me, I found this exercise more difficult than I anticipated, it took up a lot of time. This made me realise that I would need to be able to recognise what a suitable workshop is for my class' age.

                

Working individually for me adds more pressure. I think working in groups creates a better outcome because it is a collaborative of ideas but I also think it can hinder quieter people in a group. Every student will have an idea but it is about drawing it out and building on their confidence's to express them.

                These workshops have made me aware of a variety of elements that I will ensure and think about when preparing my workshops, for example: all the students will respond to each tasks differently, to encourage the students creativity and imagination, some students characters and personalities are more dominant than others, to be aware of other people's distractions, limited resources can be a good thing and that clearing up is just as important as the activities as it signifies the completion of one. 

Organisations and getting involved

The brief for DACA was broad, It was clear from the College One's brief that a workshop had to be involved, whether it was an individual workshop or a group one. We all started off considering individual workshops but decided to do a group workshop so the overall workshop idea could be bigger. The overall idea stemmed from Rory's individual idea of making paints but it was clear from group discussions that mark-making would be a prominent idea to use.    

             It was 10 'teachers' with a class of 15 students so we was aware that there was enough of us to run a workshop as big as we planned. As the classes and groups changed, we also changed roles,  it gave everyone the chance to present part of the PowerPoint and work at the other stations. 

             My first impressions of working at the school was that I found it over-whelming, intense and fast-pacing, maybe this was because I was in an unfamiliar environment and situation. The older classes seem to be more grateful for our help but they would not ask for it, we had to approach them, doing this regularly helps me build on my confidence and as each day goes by at the school, I felt my confidence growing. The younger classes want more interaction, they would shout me over, ask me how to do things and to show them how, this for me is encouraging because it made me feel approachable and that maybe the children seen me as an experienced figure that could help them.

 Planning workshops

My strengths have always lied with organisation but working in a group, I consider this to be my downfall. I need to have a detailed plan of what I am going to say/do/act/prepare whereas others in the group do not need this much preparation, preparation for me gives me confidence. Working with people from different fields in Art has been beneficial in demonstrating how different we plan and work.

              

For the PowerPoint, we all met as a group and discussed what we wanted to include but because some people in the group did not fully concentrate, not much was done, this resulted in us all taking the PowerPoint home and working on it individually. We then met again to put it all together, taking elements from each but all that was took off mine was the images which I did not mind but I would of liked my artist research text to have been used because I think it was relevant to the concept of the workshop. Louise even said at the end of the presentation that she would have wanted more artist background so maybe I should have argued my for my text to be used further. I sometimes felt over-shadowed working in this group, there are so many strong and dominant characters that sometimes I felt unheard. I did not have the confidence to argue my ideas across, at the beginning I felt nervous speaking in front of them and by the end I did feel more confident but I still felt unheard. In some group meetings it became more painful than productive, it was easier giving certain people things to do, then bringing it back and the rest of us would give advice on what could be improved. The group was sometimes too big to work in to get done anything productive.

                Our proposed outcome is a large canvas piece that will be showered with colour from recycled materials that the children will turn into paints. We did small scale trial and error experiments to test out whether the balloons would pop and how we would crush and put the 'paint' into the balloons.

The workshop duration ran smoothly until the very end when we began hanging up the balloons, the children became less interested in filling the balloons and became more interested in not focusing on what they should have been, this is because they could not get involved with hanging the balloons up because the device was too high for them to reach. We decided to hang the balloons up ourselves whilst the children carried on filling them. Maybe they were less supervised and took advantage of this, next time I suggested that the hanging device be accessible to the children, to keep them occupied. 

For the first workshop, Louise was there throughout to oversea our first trial, it must have gone well as for the second run of our workshop, Louise completely left us to it. It showed her confidence in us and that we can run a successful workshop, it made me feel impressed with myself and the group. Louise must have felt comfortable enough to leave us to make any decisions that came up, we felt a lot more relaxed in our second workshop. Practice makes perfect, or in our case practice makes for better.  

                 We agreed with Louise that we would buy the materials and give her the receipts and she would refund us, some materials we contributed ourselves. We chosen to mainly use recyclable materials because it adds to the concept of using 'recycled materials and making the students aware of the positives of this'. The materials we bought did work to our purpose, except for tissue paper, unless cut finely it just clogged the blenders. For the second workshop we also chosen not to use turpentine, in the first workshop turpentine caused some balloons to pop randomly creating unneeded mess.

Learning

From running the workshop I have learnt to be more adaptable, not to be as nervous, get as much involved as possible, enjoy the processes and be proud by how much the children seemed to enjoy it. Throughout this opportunity of work experience, I have felt my confidence grow. As this Unit has been about planning workshops and all it involves, the practical side has been limited but I still involved it by doing my own testing experiments at home. I have found that using blogger on a daily basis has become a part of my regular routine and it has helped my be more descriptive and thoughtful when reporting my days events.

                Planning our chosen workshop from the beginning was vague as I missed the original proposal because I did some volunteering at Z-arts. I was informed of the initial idea after and even though I agreed it was a great idea, the details I was given were limited but it was the very start of the workshop. We had group meetings where we discussed the workshop and how the day would run and everyone contributed. I do not think there was any disagreements, if everyone had slightly different ideas, the idea chosen was down to the group majority. Overall this worked but because some got on more than others it resulted in smaller groups being formed and anyone in that group that had an idea, the rest of the group new which idea would be chosen.

                Working at D.A.C.A has been an amazing experience. It has helped me develop a realistic idea on how a teacher's life is ran daily and what hinders they encounter, as well as the benefits. What I found encouraging about my experience at DACA was the children's gratitude of my help and this was an wonderful feeling. The hindrance I found in some of my classes was one or two disruptive students but with one to one attention they settled down rather quick. Even though some students can be disruptive and there were hindrances during the workshop, as a group we problem solved and learnt from it and moved on, this is how I would be and work as if becoming a teacher was to become a reality in the future. Nothing from working at D.A.C.A has put me off this prospect, if anything working at D.A.C.A has strengthened my passion for wanting to become a teacher, this may have been different if I worked at another high school. Louise and the children I worked with were so receptive and there was little restrictions making this workshop and experience incredible.        

                 

Reflection

My aim throughout working at DACA was to gain as much work experience as I possibly could. As I would like my future career to be in teaching, my main goal at DACA was to figure out what specific age range I would be most suitable to work with. I only worked with Year 7's and Year 10's but the gap between the 2 was huge. I enjoyed working with Year 7's because of how imaginative they are but I also enjoyed working with Year 10's as the ones I worked with were knowledgeable, committed and open as well as appreciative of any help I gave them.                                 

                         My expected outcome for the workshops was limited to the outcome we received. I may have put myself down as well as my group by having such a small expectation but the outcome was amazing and I was thrilled with the feedback from both the students and Louise. 

  

               

My greatest challenge that I had to overcome was my confidence and being confident when approaching the students, I found this very challenging. To overcome it, I gave it little thought. I realised that I have knowledge and expertise that could be beneficial to them.                              

To further this line of work I would continue to gain work experience in the field of teaching. I would like to have the opportunity to continue to work at DACA and also find work experience at other schools, to ensure myself that teaching is the right choice for me, as a career. From this Unit I have learnt a lot about myself and my confidence has certainly grown. I think that to become a teacher I need to be more aware that the children that I will be teaching will have external factors that affect the way they behave in class, I found this evident with some of the children at D.A.C.A.

Individually I put all my effort into everything I did. However, when working in a group I could have done a lot more and got more involved. I felt that sometimes I was not confident enough to argue my ideas further. We all played our part in making the workshop and this Unit a success. I have used my organisational skills, my communication skills and my practical and technical knowledge throughout this Unit, I also managed my workload, became resourceful when choosing materials and I worked collaboratively. As a group, we all set goals, tasks, we solved problems when they occurred, negotiated ideas and most importantly worked as a team. It has definitely been an enjoyable experience and the feedback was informative for when planning the same workshop on how to improve it and it was also encouraging to read. I hoped to have made a difference in one child's life and if so this experience began terrifying but it was worthwhile. 

               

College One: Blog Focus- Reflection...

My aim throughout working at DACA was to gain as much work experience as I possibly could. As I would like my future career to be in teaching, my main goal at DACA was to figure out what specific age range I would be most suitable to work with. When working with different ages at DACA, I realised that I enjoyed working with multiple ages rather than the one, I think this is because each age surprised me. I only worked with Year 7's and Year 10's but the gap between the 2 was huge. I enjoyed working with Year 7's because of how imaginative they are but I also enjoyed working with Year 10's as the ones I worked with were knowledgeable, committed and open as well as appreciative of any help I gave them.

My expected outcome for the workshops was limited to the outcome we received. I may have put myself down as well as my group by having such a small expectation but the outcome was amazing and I was thrilled with the feedback from both the students and Louise as well as how relieved the group was that the workshop ran smoothly and the outcome was successful.

My greatest challenge that I had to overcome was my confidence and being confident when approaching the students, I found this very challenging. To overcome it, I gave it little thought and just forced myself to be confident. I think I realised that I have knowledge and expertise that could be beneficial to them and if I do not approach them now, I never would and if I could not do it now, would I ever make it as a teacher. Making myself approach the students was beneficial for me as the students began approaching me for help, it made me feel useful.

Individually I put all my effort into everything I did. However, when working in a group I could have done a lot more and got more involved. I felt that sometimes my voice was not heard because I was not confident enough to argue my ideas further. Everyone in the group got a long and we all played our part in making the workshop and this Unit successful. I have used my organisational skills, my communication skills and my practical and technical knowledge throughout this Unit, I also managed my workload, became resourceful when choosing materials and I worked collaboratively. As a group, we all set goals, tasks, we solved problems when they occurred, negotiated ideas and most importantly worked as a team. It has definitely been an enjoyable experience.

To further this line of work I would continue to gain work experience in the field of teaching. As I have missed a lot of the time allocated by DACA through doing other voluntary work and being ill, I would like to have the opportunity to work at DACA again. I would also like to work at other schools and with different ages to gain more experience and to ensure myself that teaching is the right choice for me, as a career.

From this Unit I have learnt a lot about myself and my confidence has certainly grown. Working at DACA gave me the great opportunity to gain a realisation of what being a teacher or a teacher's assistant is like.   

College One: Blog Focus- Learning...

Throughout this opportunity of work experience, I have felt my confidence grow. As this Unit has been about planning workshops and all it involves, the practical side has been limited. Drawing, experimenting and using sketchbooks has usually been a visual way for me to document my projects throughout university, not using them to demonstrate my experience has been hard. On the other hand, I have found using blogger on a daily basis has become a part of my regular routine and it has helped my be more descriptive and thoughtful when reporting my days events.

Planning our chosen workshop from the beginning was vague as I missed the original proposal because I did some volunteering at Z-arts. I was informed of the initial idea after and even though I agreed it was a great idea, the details I was given were limited but it was the very start of the workshop. We had group meetings where we discussed the workshop and how the day would run and everyone contributed. I do not think there was any disagreements but I do think some of the group were heard more than others. If everyone had slightly different ideas, the idea chosen was down to the group majority. I found putting the PowerPoint together was difficult, we all met to do this but as it did not get fully finished that day, each took it home and individually worked on it, some of us then brought it back and areas of each were put into one. Only my images from my PowerPoint were selected which was fine but I would of liked some of the text on the artists to have been used as I thought it gave out concept more meaning and contextual references. This was still used but it was not evident on the PowerPoint.

Working at DACA has been an amazing experience so far. It has helped me develop a realistic idea on how a teacher's life is ran daily and what hinders they encounter, as well as the benefits. What I found encouraging about my experience at DACA was the children's gratitude of my help and this was an wonderful feeling. The hindrance I found in some of my classes was one or two disruptive students but with one to one attention they settled down rather quick.   

Working with people from different fields in Art has been beneficial in demonstrating how different we plan and work. I consider myself an organised person and without having a plan set in stone or hard evidence of what I am going to say and do, I am out of my comfort zone and this Unit has definitely proved this. Others in the group can leave things to the last minute but that unsettled me, it has been an experience working this way and it has improved my confidence but I prefer working more prepared which is why I felt more at ease on the second run of the workshop.

College One: Timetabled run through of our workshop...

Above is the timetable we used for how the day would run. 

Before the children would come at 9:30am, we would have to sew the 2 pieces of large canvas together and iron it out, set up the chairs for the presentation and remove all the tables out of the way and set up the presentation. We also would layout all of the recyclable materials that they would be choosing from.

As the children come in, we would ask them to put there overalls on and give them goggles to start with. As for the Introduction, we did a presentation that ran through what we was going to do for the day. It included Contextual Research that put how we got to this workshop idea into context, why we was recycling materials to make paint, the pros and cons of recycling and why they was doing this workshop- to experiment with mark-making and exploring other areas of art and what is considered a piece of art. 

Whilst the children went off for their first break, we would take this opportunity to set up the blending and making paint stations. We had to newspaper all the tables, put no slip matts down, lay out the cutting equipment such as: scissors, knifes, folks, rolling pins and hammers, set up the blenders, oil and cups. We also removed all of the chairs.

After their first 20 minute break, the children would come back and we would split them up into 2 groups. Each group would then be designated into either a blending or making paints stations, we would split ourselves up within the groups at each station, it would work out at the minimum of 2 'teachers' per station. The groups would then swap over so everyone had the opportunity to try both, this gave us the option to try both as well. Once both groups had tried both stations and settled into their second one, all of us 'teachers' would then spread out around the room and work with the other students. Once this section was done with, we would have a small cleaning session which would lead to dinner.

Through dinner we would put all of the equipment away and put away the tables left out for the stations away to give room for the children to make the hanging device and to layout the canvas.

After dinner, it would be time to fill the balloons and make the hanging device. The children would be split up back into there groups and sent to either station and then they would swap over again. At this point, I would remain at filling the balloons until the hanging device was made and once it was up, I would then start to hang the balloons using string and all the children would help, if the device was too high, the 'teachers' would attach the string to the device whilst the children attached the balloons to the string. 

We then clean up everywhere, this can take a lot of time and keeping the children's attention to help can be even harder. Once it is all cleaned up, some of us would take the children into another room and get their feedback through little post-it notes. This helps us find out what we could improve and what worked. Whilst we do this, Rory, Denise and Hayley would set up all the camera equipment. We would also lay and flatten the canvas. Once it is all set up, the children would come back in and take some pictures, maybe even a group photo? The fun would then begin.

As we wanted to film and take pictures of the children popping the balloons, they were put back into their groups and took it in turn. All of the children would be wearing overalls, mouth masks as well as goggles for protection.     

Our second run of the workshop...

It was our second run of our workshop and the first thing that stood out to me was the atmosphere and how relaxed it felt. We had originally planned for a rotation for who would present the presentation but for today, we all stood at the front and each said something, no matter how small it was, everyone engaged well together and I think this time around the children engaged more as well, they asked questions and seemed excited from the offset. Some of the children had even heard about the workshop from the children from the last one we did, they said they enjoyed it and someone even put a picture of it on Instagram, which I found really sweet and encouraging that what we did was successful.

For this workshop, we had 2 less helpers but it did not seem to hinder the day, we actually ended up finishing earlier than the first workshop, I think this is because we was aware and more prepared of how it would run, what could go wrong and how we improved it from last weeks workshop. We did change a few things from last workshop. We did not use white spirit as this is what we though caused the balloon to pop earlier than expected, we originally used it so that the wet paint balloons would dry because food was used and for it to help to stick dry balloons that had been popped, I am worried about whether the final 2nd canvas will dry but we did encourage more wet balloons than dry ones, as well as sieving out big clumpy parts. For this workshop we had the children filling the balloons and pumping them up, we did it with them but I think they became more independent at this point, the only thing most of them could not do was tying the balloons so this is where we stepped in. The hanging device this time around had to be sturdier than before because we noticed it dipped a lot once all the balloons were up, we also had the children attaching the balloons to the device but near to the end, the children started becoming silly by wanting to get in the middle of them so we had to ask them to get down and add the rest of the balloons ourselves.

I enjoyed the workshop but I feel like there is not enough roles to go around. At certain points in the workshop I found myself just stood there or cleaning up just to give myself something to do.

Working with different people from different fields in Art is good because I get to view how they approach planning and running a workshop. We do work well together but I consider myself more organised, needing time to plan and get things together but other people in the group can do this last minute, I feel this is my downfall when working in a group.

   

College One: Blog Focus: Planning workshops...

When working with different age groups my methods of how I speak or approach them does not differ but the confidence it takes for me to approach them does change, especially when approaching older children because they may know more then I do and this makes me ask myself 'how can I help them'.

My strengths have always lied with organisation but working in a group, I consider this to be my downfall. This is because I need to have a detailed plan of what I am going to say/do/act/prepare whereas others in the group do not need this much preparation. Preparation for me gives me confidence because I know what I am going to do. I cannot 'blag' my way through a workshop, whereas this is where other people's strengths lie in the group. This has been challenging for me whilst working in a group, we make decisions on the largest amount it would suit, by doing this I have learned to be more adaptable but without a workshop being completely organised, I feel slightly uncomfortable about approaching the workshop. After doing it once, I feel more prepared and ready for the next sessions.

Our proposed outcome is a large canvas piece that will be showered with colour from recycled materials that the children will turn into paints. We collaboratively selected this workshop as it had the one thing our individual workshops had in common, this being mark-making.

The workshop duration ran smoothly until the very end when we began hanging up the balloons, the children became less interested in filling the balloons and became more interested in messing about with the materials and not focusing on what they should have been. I think this is because they could not get involved with hanging the balloons up because the device was to high for them to reach and if they pulled to hard on it, they could have pulled it down. We decided as the 'teachers' to hang them ourselves whilst the children carried on filling the balloons. Maybe they were less supervised and took advantage of this, next time I would suggest that some of us supervise the children and maybe get them to mark-make with the left over paints to keep them busy.

We agreed with Louise that we would buy most of the materials and give her the receipts and she would refund us and this seemed to work well. Some materials we contributed ourselves. We chosen to mainly use recyclable materials because it adds to the concept of using 'recycled materials and making the students aware of the positives of this'. As there was 10 'teachers' to 15 students, they was enough of us to go around and help each student when they needed it.

For the next workshop, we are not using white spirit as we think this is one of the reasons to why some of the balloons popped before we wanted them too. I would also add more background on our artist influences and to just be more confident.

Contextual references are important for showing the children where we gained our ideas from and to give them content to why they are doing this exercise. I had to do some research into this area and gather artists that I believed to be influential in why we are doing this workshop and those who inspired the processes we was going to use. From running the workshop I have learn't to be more adaptable, not to be as nervous, get as much involved as possible, enjoy the processes and be proud by how much the children seemed to enjoy it.

College One: Blog Focus- Organisations and getting involved...

The brief for DACA was broad, it seemed that Louise was open to any suggestions as long as that it would help and interest the students. It was clear from the College One's brief that a workshop had to be involved at some point, whether it was an individual workshop or a group one. We all started off considering individual workshops but I think we decided to do a group workshop so that the overall workshop idea could be bigger. The overall idea stemmed from Rory's individual idea of making paints but everyone in the group was interested and involved mark-making in their individual workshops so it was clear that mark-making would be a prominent idea in the group workshop.

It was 10 'teachers' with a class of 15 students so we was aware that there was enough of us to run a workshop this big. We will be working in the same group each week but the class group and size will vary, we will also change roles each week, so that everyone will get the chance to present the PowerPoint and work at the other stations more. If in the other sessions the group size will be bigger, we would need to have objects/materials to blend, more cups and maybe more equipment such as: scissors, hammers and rolling pins. This was a Year 7 group and there attention span near to the end lapsed, if it was an older group I think there attention span would work fine for our original time-plan of the day, if it is another Year 7 class, I would shorten the length of time to fill and hang the balloons and ask for feedback directly from the children instead.

My first impressions of working at the school was that I found it over-whelming working with different age ranges but I also find this same aspect exciting because what I did during the day with these groups changes. I consider the older classes to be more grateful for our help but they would not ask for it, we had to approach them, doing this regularly helps me build on my confidence and as each day goes by at the school, I can feel my confidence growing. Younger classes want more interaction, they would shout me over, ask me  how to do things and to show them how, this for me is encouraging. I enjoy working with Year 9+ because I know I am helping them and they are becoming informed but working with Year 7's is more interesting and rewarding because I feel like they could benefit from my experiences more.